Tuesday, May 03, 2005

A few weeks ago, a guy who lives in the Channel Islands contacts me on gaydar. He’s seen my profile, and is interested in meeting me for a bit of fun the next time he's in London. We exchange a few messages and eventually his visit to London is set for the end of April, when he'll be passing through on his way to Spain for a holiday.

It turns out that he doesn’t have a mobile phone. How strange, everyone I know in London has a mobile phone these days. For arranging this kind of meeting, I reckon it’s almost an essential. So I agree to phone him last Thursday evening, which is the day he arrives from the Channel Islands, to try and sort out how we can meet up. Luckily his flight isn’t delayed so he is in the hotel when I phone. We agree that I’ll visit him before work the following day.

We meet up as arranged. “We’ll have to be careful”, he says, “the hotel reception watches who enters and leaves very carefully. Just follow me, we’ll just pretend that we’re going to do some paperwork in my room”.

I'm a bit surprised that a hotel reception in a busy London hotel will be so vigilant, but I don’t question his caution. We reach his room without incident and I strip off. We have a satisfactory session.

Afterwards he tells me how difficult it still is being gay in the Channel Islands, and how careful you have to be.

“I took a guy back to my place and we have some fun in bed together, but then at 3am he tells me he’s got to go home. That’s strange I think. Anyway it turns out that he’s married. His wife asks him where he’s been and he must have been evasive because she does some searching and finds my phone number written down on a bit of paper. She actually phones me, which was a nightmare. The problem in the Channel Islands is that it’s quite a small place, and it’s very easy to connect phone numbers with people.”

Coming from a background like this, no wonder the guy is always cautions. Sometimes I forget how easy it is being gay in London.

I'm a gay man, living in London UK. My blogging pen name is GB, which stands for Gay Banker.

Professionally, I'm an investment banker, which unfortunately is an occupation that's been rather out of favour with the general public in recent years. However, I like to think that I'm one of the good guys :-). I'm also an agony uncle. Please refer to my 'About me' page for more information.

Requests for advice welcome, but please be prepared for anonymous publication in the Dear GB category. Also please check the Dear GB archives in case any of the existing postings can help. Reader's stories also welcome. Note that any e-mails which are accidentally routed to the junk-mail folder will almost certainly get missed.